(Background: Part 1: Mysterium Dei)
4. If a sufficient reason for affirming the existence of God is that there is something rather than nothing (1 - 1.1), and if God cannot be thought of in the same way we think of objects in the vast array of somethings we call reality (2-3), and if therefore our discourse about God necessarily falls short (3.1 - 3.2.1), on what basis can we make even inadequate inferences about God?
4.1. Our starting point must be the axiomatic claim that there is something rather than nothing, and that this something is created by God.
4.1.1. Corollary 1: God’s creation of the vast array of somethings is ex nihilo.
4.1.1.a. Scriptural justification for 4.1.1.: God breathes on the “unformed and void,” tohu wa-bohu, (Genesis 1:1)
4.1.1.b. Philosophical warrant for 4.1.1.: for God not to have created ex nihilo suggests either that the vast array of somethings we call reality is eternal, or that it wasn’t “created” so much as “rearranged” out of preexisting stuff. The first suggests (metaphysically) the absence of divine priority; the second raises (methodologically) the flybottle of an infinite regress.
4.1.2. Corollary 2: God is infinite and eternal.
4.1.2.1. Justification for 4.1.2.: God cannot be thought of as a spatio-temporal object in the vast array of somethings called reality (2 - 3).
5. If something-other-than-God is to come into being, “room” must be made for the something-other-than-God. Creation of the vast array of somethings-other-than-God we call reality depends, therefore, on a “diminution” or “shrinkage” of divine infinity or plenitude. This divine shrinkage is what Isaac Luria calls tsimtsum.1
5.1. Only God can diminish God. The diminution of divine infinity or plenitude must be generated within and by God.
5.1.2. It follows that the creation of the vast array of somethings we call reality can be characterized as an act of self-giving generosity.
5.1.3. Therefore, the act of creation allows us to infer, always keeping in mind the linguistic restrictions on Godtalk (3), that God is self-giving.
Scare quotes are used here to underscore that these are metaphors rather than straightforward descriptions. But I believe them to be fruitful metaphors.